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It was great to see Cody Loveland of LoveFab again, he was there to support his fiancé Tabitha Lohr who was co-driving for Tracey Gardiner in the TAG Rally Sports Toyota Yaris. Although Dylan’s beard keeps his face warmer than a lesser man’s, his eyes were unprotected and actually froze shut due to the freezing winds.
Relentless Rally Team doesn’t just have matching beards, they also have a couple of gnarly Foresters. Drew’s flat black beast (the FURBRGR) served me well last weekend, and Dylan’s red one (the RGMNCHR) in the background was unstoppable on the logging roads of LSPR last fall.Having broken the exhaust on my Subaru Legacy GT while ice racing a few weeks prior, I chose to drive my Nissan Sentra to Sno*Drift. My Sentra sports much of the suspension off of Wes’s Project 200SX, which makes it pretty much useless in the snow. Fortunately Drew was too pre-occupied with co-driving to notice that I’d borrowed his lifted Forester to get between stages. After loving how well this beast handled itself on the awful Michigan roads, I’ve spent a good bit of time searching Craigslist to get a Forester of my own…
Antoine L’Estage and his Rockstar Energy Evo X was the overall winner of last year’s event, and was seeded first on Friday. He would hold his first place position through the eighth stage of this year’s event, but Higgins would close the gap and take the lead during the snowy night stages at the end of day one.
The STi of David Higgins was having some overheating issues going into stage four, unfortunately the hood pins were not replaced properly forcing him to complete the stage with almost no forward visibility. Once the sun went down Higgins would take first place during the night stages and finish the day with a lead of 26.9 seconds.
Although the easily recognizable open class STi of “Crazy” Leo Urlichich was seen tearing it up on stage, it was piloted instead by Alexandre Beland and Lyne Murphy. This was the first time competing in a Rally America event for the both of them, managing to take third in class and an overall finish in a very respectable fifth place at 2:44:46.0.
James Robinson and co-driver Jordan Guitar were the B-SPEC champions last year in their 2009 Honda Fit, and are already shaping up to do it again this year with a class win at 3:26:42.9.
